


Convergence

by Rogue0fVoid



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-04 20:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5347892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogue0fVoid/pseuds/Rogue0fVoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cato's heart stutters back to life, Katniss finds herself as one of three victors. </p><p>Eventual Cato x Katniss</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Do

"It takes a few moments to find Cato in the dim light, in the blood. Then the raw hunk of meat that used to be my enemy makes a sound, and I know where his mouth is. And I think the word he's trying to say is please."

- _The Hunger Games_ , pgs 340 - 341

**Convergence**

When Cato falls, Katniss feels nothing. A survivor by nature, it would only seem natural to feel satisfaction over the misfortune of a foe who threatened her survival. But instead, as her hands tighten around the smooth silver of the bow, she feels nothing but emptiness. It should bother her, she thinks, the lack of feeling she has. Instead, she watches the boy who loved to kill fall to the mutts who wait to kill him.

'Predators hunt in packs,' Katniss thinks.

And Cato finds his way to the eager jaws of a larger pack.

* * *

 

Cato's armor slowly becomes his undoing. He fights the best he can, considering the circumstances. But even with all of his training, he is still only human. The mutts may not be the craftiest of creatures, but their driving bloodlust is a powerful force to contend against.

He counts the bites carved into his flesh after they inevitably overwhelm him. Each bite is a punishing reminder of how he failed to win the Games he was born to conquer. The mutts do their best to shred him to pieces, whining and encouraging one another as they continue their assault on his body. Their teeth gnaw on the armor that works as a barricade against the full strength of their bite. His precious armor has sentenced him to a slow, brutal, bloody death.

The mutts do their work on his body and soon Cato is crying out. It goes against everything District 2 has taught him and he's ashamed that he's failing them even in this.

When the armor on his right arm eventually gives way, the mutts set upon it gleefully. They taunt him with their fangs, running their salivary lips and yellowed teeth over the surface of his skin. Their breath smells like dead flesh and innocence and they strike with their bites without warning. The mutts marvel at the way in which their meal jumps from the random assaults, his desperation driving them on to try and rip apart the rest of the armor. Cato imagines what he would do to the mutts if only he could reach his sword and tries to lose himself in that fantasy as he screams and screams and screams.

As Cato finally reaches his limit and his voice has whittled down to match what's left of his arm, he finds enough energy to call out to the girl from District 12. "Please," he begs, asking for the mercy that he himself might have not given to her if their situations were reversed.

Cato was raised in a District where pain was good, pain was taught, pain was celebrated. Pain was power. Or it used to be for him. Despite the mutts' brutal work on his arm, the greatest agony comes from admitting to her that he cannot take this any longer, and that kind of pain holds no power for him.

"Please."

Cato has lost, and Katniss has won.

"Please…"

* * *

 

As Katniss readies her arrow, Cato, first in everything he has done in life, has had enough. His heart beats once, twice, and then comes to a halt.

As the cannon booms over the arena, instead of the mercy kill she intended, Katniss's arrow hits the mutt that was about to bite off Cato's head.

* * *

 

Peeta, lying in a pool of growing blood, attempts to staunch the blood flow. He lifts the cloth to inspect his wound, winches, and replaces the bandage. At the sound of the cannon, he jerks his head up and over to see what happened. "Katniss," he asks tentatively, "that cannon, is Cato…?"

Katniss stands overlooking the edge of the Cornucopia. Her body, rigid with anxious energy, deflates. She turns her head over her shoulder and Peeta glimpses a vulnerability that flashes through her eyes. Her relief that it's all over, finally all over, is clear and Peeta realizes just how much she worked to hold it all together.

"Cato is dead and the mutts are leaving," she tells him. "The Games are over."

Peeta struggles to rise, and Katniss rushes over to help him stand. "Don't overdo it," she says. "You don't have the tourniquet for your leg anymore."

He offers her a faint smile. "Well, good thing we are going home. With some help from your mother, I'm sure I'll be fixed up in no time."

Katniss and Peeta struggle their way down the ledge, completely exhausted. The stress and fatigue of the Games has taken its toll on them, and it shows. They are left with only quivering muscles, adrenaline withdrawal, and the disbelief that they are at the end of this madness, together and alive as victors.

When they reach the ground, Peeta's body is shaking so badly that he has to sit down immediately. Katniss sits down too and leans against him, all too aware that the camera is still on them. Peeta turns to look at where Cato's body lies crumbled on the ground, studying the aftermath. The ravaged armor is somewhat intact, depending on the place the viewer was looking. The blood splashed over it, however, cannot be missed.

"I thought you shot…?"

Katniss shakes her head. "No, the cannon went off just as I went to shoot him. I ended up hitting one of the mutts instead."

The blond glances down at his mangled leg, feeling the push, push, push of blood leaving his body far too quickly for it to possibly be alright. "If they could do this to me with only one bite, I don't want to imagine how he felt as their chew toy for all that time. Nobody deserves that."

"I don't want to think about it," she tells him. And that is that.

The two stare straight ahead into the waiting cameras they cannot see but know are there, and wait for the Games to officially end.

* * *

 

The gamemakers are in an uproar and there is nothing Seneca Crane can do about it. With President Snow undoubtedly watching, Crane's anxiety heightens as he tries to regain control of a Game that has started to crumble from the moment the girl from 12 volunteered.

Some controllers watch the monitors, mystified, as the two tributes who remain from District 12 refuse to kill one another. Crane's grand finale, his triumph and key to regain President Snow's approval, has turned against him and he is at a loss of what to do. 'This has never happened before,' he thinks. His rattled thoughts on how to possibly fix this mess all bleed into each other, and there's no doubt in his mind that his time in this world might be up.

Snow may still be at the mansion, but it doesn't take Crane much to imagine what he say if he were here now. "Just what are you going to do, Seneca?" echoes the voice of President Snow in his head, his phantom figure twirling a soft white rose between the tips of his fingers. "What ever will you to do?"

'Two victors or no victors. Two victors vs no victors. Which is worse?' he debates, watching as the monitor displays Katniss and Peeta reaching for nightlock-flavored suicide. Their dual deaths would no doubt cause a larger uproar than Snow will ever tolerate, but would granting them both their lives spark an even bigger uprising? It was just too hard to say. Sweat trickles in greasy lines down his forehead, leaving trails on his cheeks and puddling in his beard.

'Two victors,' he decides, 'is better than no victors,' and presses the loudspeaker to stop the pair just in time. The control room is deadly quiet after his announcement, an unspeakable feeling of dread creeping around the room and spreading from person to person like a silent disease. Two victors for the Hunger Games? It is unheard of. It is unnatural.

It is dangerous.

Crane forges ahead in his facade of control, ordering the medical team waiting on the sidelines of the arena to go down and collect the two victors. The Hunger Games needs its victor(s) just as Panem needs the Hunger Games, after all.

The Head Gamemaker draws out a rumbled handkerchief and blots his face. The cloth smears the sweat around but doesn't do much to help. He nearly jumps out of his skin as an assistant informs him that President Snow is on the hologram phone and it would be in his best interest not to keep him waiting.

"Two victors you have given me," states Snow's hologram on the call monitor. "Two."

Crane blots his forehead again and rushes to answer. "I know it's unheard of sir, but how could a Hunger Games not have a victor? It would create—"

"Martyrs," Snow interrupts, "You would have given me a pair of martyrs."

"I know sir, that's why I thought it would be bes—"

"So instead," Snow thunders in his quiet way, "You gave Panem hope. Have you forgotten what we've discussed about hope?"

"Of course not, sir!" Crane reassures him anxiously. "But I—"

An assistant gamemaker approaches Seneca Crane again, skin pale and face drawn. "Sir?" she calls to him, but Crane waves her away as if she were an obnoxious gnat. "Not now, can't you see I'm busy?" he reprimands her in his high pitched way. "I'm sorry, President Snow. She—"

Snow doesn't raise his voice an octave above normal, but he doesn't really need to in order for his words to carry the weight he places behind them. "Two victors, Crane. You better—"

"Sir?"

This time Snow is the one interrupted, as the assistant gamemaker tries again to deliver her message. She hops slightly back and forth from one anxious foot to another, a nervous bird in many respects, and hopes she lives to see tomorrow after this. Snow finally turns his unfeeling gaze onto her. Crane may be babbling in the background but it is now the assistant in the spotlight.

Snow stares her down, his eyes glinting dangerously as he asks, "Just what is so important, miss?"

The assistant gamemaker squirms under such a stare and her voice comes out as nothing more than a squeak. She gulps, attempting to regain some composure, and points in the direct of the monitors. Clustered around them are the rest of the gamemakers, slack jawed expressions splattered all over their faces.

"It's the male tribute from District 2," she manages to get out. "It's his heart. It started back up—" and her voice grinds to a halt as she sees the look Snow has on his face. The screen with the tribute's picture has the words 'ALIVE' glowing underneath, the tracker in Cato's body verifying that the boy was indeed still among the living. For Crane, it's the affirmation of a nightmare that he did not believe could possibly get worse.

"What do we do, sir? We already have the retrieval team out there right now with the District 12 tributes and every station is currently streaming this around the nation."

Snow looks to the monitor that shows Katniss, the girl who has already caused him so much trouble, speaking with the retrieval team and gesturing towards Peeta, who is still on the ground. In her hands, clutched tight, is the silver bow. The second monitor shows a body covered in battered, bloody armor and a boy that should be dead but now isn't.

"Leave him there," Snow orders. "Don't bother with him. And for heaven's sake, don't let the rest of the nation find out."

Crane protests, still in a state of shock at the further worsening of his already perilous situation. "But his chest. You can see it slightly rising and falling. He's not quite dead ye—"

The Head Gamemaker is silenced with a look from Snow. "He has already been declared dead, hasn't he, Seneca? How much would it matter if he died a few minutes ago or will die in a few moments from now? Dead is dead, and that tribute is dead. Do you understand me?"

Crane gulps. "Yes sir. No treatment. The Games are officially over after all, so if I restart them now the Districts will be thrown into chaos—"

"Restart them? You fool. Your stupidity with that underdog girl has caused enough trouble already," Snow cuts in. "If you show Panem that the District 2 tribute is still alive, it will only further mutilate the purpose of this entire event. The Hunger Games has only one victor and you have already botched that simple understanding. Keep your idiotic mouth shut for once in your life and let that boy die."

Crane has enough sense to close his mouth and obey his President.

* * *

 

As the medical team gets ready to load Peeta onto the hovercraft, Katniss does some hovering of her own over his body. "He is going to be fine, right?" she asks, and nods her head along to their reassuring replies. She won't believe them until Peeta is out of the arena and in a hospital, getting the help he so desperately needs. She wants them to put Peeta back together and then they'll get the hell out of the Capitol and away from Snow. Going back to District 12 isn't any safer—there is no place in Panem safe from a government that makes a show out of children killing children—but at least it's familiar and that's all Katniss wants right now.

At the thought of home, Katniss instinctively reaches up to touch the mockingjay pin that has never left her since she started the Games. Her heart thuds heavily when she finds it missing. She unzips her battered jacket and runs her hands across the empty, glaring space where the pin once sat.

Noticing her frantic movements, Peeta calls to her, "What's wrong?"

"It's my pin—my mockingjay pin. It's gone."

Despite being strapped to a gurney and clucked at by the medics for moving, Peeta still attempts to lift his body and glance around the arena for the missing pin. "Did it fall off when we were fighting Cato?"

Uncertainly flitters across her face. "Maybe. I guess it can't hurt to look," she tells him, and heads back over to the Cornucopia before anyone can stop her. The cameras zoom in to follow behind and Katniss imagines the way the Games' commentators are prattling on about this. The Girl on Fire, our unlikely victor, taking the time to search for a pin when most would have just left as soon as possible! Guts, they would say, guts!

Katniss walks around the side of the Cornucopia, her footsteps causing little clouds of dust to rise up and cover her boots. The dirt settles and sticks in random patterns to the drying blood that cakes the leather material. The blood on them has become so mixed to the point Katniss can't even remember whose blood it is that actually stains her boots. It might be better that way.

She passes by the mutt she has killed, her arrow wedged deep within the soft tissue of its brain. The creature has died with its mouth snarled open, ropes of bloodied saliva hanging from its teeth, and it reminds her on some level of Clove. Clove, who lusted for the kill more than she lusted for life.

She finds her pin moments later, half submerged in a damp pool of sticky blood that oozes out from Cato's mangled arm. Bending to retrieve it brings her close to the face of her rival, and she can't avoid the stillness of his once animated body. Cato was always so quick to anger and to act. Given his life as a Career, he had always seemed fated for a quick death as well, except for when his death was finally upon him. The mutts' prolonged torture of the Career made sure there was nothing fast about it.

"Victor Everdeen, hurry! Did you find your pin?" She hears someone from the medic squad call. Katniss draws herself up, the pin clutched safely in her hand, and gives the broken form of Cato one final look. The brutal way he died might haunt her for some time to come, but she's not sad that her enemy is gone. It was his life or hers at the end, after all. One of them had to take the fall, and she would much rather it was he who did.

Katniss turns to leave, ready to leave as much of this hellish Game as she can behind her, but something draws her gaze back. Later on, as they're getting ready to pull the three of them from the arena, she regrets whatever made her take a second look at the boy whose only proved himself to be nothing more than a zealous killer. As much as she'll go over it again and again in her head, she'll never be able to pinpoint what exactly makes her turn back. It could have been the slight rise of his chest, drawing air raggedly into his lungs, that catches her attention. Maybe it was fate. All that matters is that she notices, and what she sees causes her to stop and drop back down to the ground.

Impatient with waiting for her to return, the medics appear to retrieve Katniss. They fuss at her, telling her to leave the corpse alone and to come along with them. But Katniss, unable to stop herself from confirming what she suspects, places her finger along the side of his neck.

There is a pulse.

With the cameras that worship her every movement fixated on the unlikely victor, the words fight their way out before she can decide if it's best to keep them in. They slip out like sluggish blood to the medics, sliding past the lips of a girl who cannot understand how this could be fair.

"His heart's beating. Cato's still alive."

Why did such a killer get to keep his life when tributes like Rue couldn't?

Panem erupts from the announcement, and President Snow finds himself with three victors.

Seneca Crane finds himself very much dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on ff.net in 2012, this fic is roughly a bit more than halfway complete. This story is LONG. Will have 40+ chapters at the end with 22 presently written. Currently editing older chapters and crossposting to AO3 as I go before new content is written. Thanks for reading!


	2. You

"For a moment, everything seems frozen in time. Then the apples spill to the ground and I'm blown backward into the air."

- _The Hunger Games,_ pg. 221

**Convergence**

Chapter Two

The world detonates.

The players scramble to survive while the stagnant are swallowed up alive.

* * *

The medics ignore Peeta's protests from the gurney as they wheel him onto the waiting hovercraft. "Where's Katniss?" he demands, "I'm not leaving the arena until she's back." He puts up a show of struggling against the straps holding him in place, all bravado and puffed up defiance. The medics know this and decisively push him back into place.

"Victor Mellark, calm yourself! Don't worry about her and let us do our duty," scolds the closest one. The medic has a soothing voice that hints of antiseptic and sterile rooms, and it makes Peeta uneasy. "Do you think Victor Everdeen would appreciate your lack of cooperation? We need to get you on board the hovercraft immediately for further treatment."

He shakes his head in protest, dismissing their reassurances. Looking for her pin has taken far too long, and Peeta has no trust whatsoever in the Capitol and whatever lurks in the arena. The arena is a place fertilized by the carnage of mutilated innocence and haunted by the ghosts of forgotten children. He wants to leave it immediately, but not without her. His voice barely carries as he calls out again, "Katniss! Where are you?"

The medics  _tutt tutt_ at his impertinence and continue wheeling him onto the ship. Even with the emergency medical treatment he received from the medics, Peeta can still feel the hot pulse of blood making a hasty exit from his mangled leg. But Peeta doesn't care about himself, he can't give a damn about his leg or his life if Katniss is still unaccounted for. So he continues to call for her the best he can, even when the pain of his injuries fogs his mind and causes spots to grow like fungi across his vision.

The cameras capture the meaty mess of Peeta's leg and zoom in upon his pasty face and dilated eyes.  _'Just look!'_ Caesar Flickermann eagerly exclaims to his captive audience.  _'What devotion! Peeta Mellark is bleeding out on the gurney and may lose his leg, but all that matters is where his ladylove is! Can you imagine such a thing?'_

Peeta's just slipping into unconsciousness as one of the medics who left to check on Katniss frantically returns. He gestures towards the Cornucopia and tells the others to move quickly. Peeta can't say for certain, but it sounds like the medic said they didn't have much time.

Peeta immediately thinks the worst even as the blood loss knocks him out.

* * *

Cato's name slips from Katniss's lips and Panem is left forever changed. Those watching stare at their screens with wide eyes and open mouths, unable to process that yet  _another_  tribute is still alive. The constant live stream of the Game cuts away from Cato's mangled body and switches over to an unconscious Peeta, but the damage is already done. The implication of what has transpired goes  _Pop! Pop! Pop!_ within the minds of all those who watch (and within those who have been watching and waiting for a very long time).

The Career from 2 is still alive.

The whispers break out among those who are brave enough to speak. They keep their eyes trained on the looming Peacekeepers, who seem to be at a loss of what to do. The Games may be over, but the Career boy still lives. The tributes from 12 are also both alive. That's three lives at the end of a Game built around having a sole winner. The only question that matters now is whether the Capitol will kill him or spare him.

Some citizens call for the video stream to switch back to Cornucopia and forget the hovercraft and the bread boy, but their neighbors quickly shush those that do. Even in a time of confusion, there is the instinctive urge to follow the law and not speak badly against the Capitol. It is just the correct thing to do, even though the sheep disagree against the actions of their shepherd.

* * *

President Snow orders the medics to treat the District 2 boy, much to everyone's surprise.

He does not make the decision lightly.

Snow has no real desire to save Cato. In fact, he hopes the Career takes it upon himself to snuff out, just like he should have done in the first place. It would save him a lot of trouble in the end. Snow doesn't think it was so much to ask for, especially when the boy was already inconsiderate enough to hang onto life.

The medics rush to comply with the surprising orders while the Game commentators are at a loss of how to spin this new twist. His subordinates have no idea what Snow is thinking but they know better than to disagree. To question the President was to end up like poor Seneca Crane, who was dragged sniveling from the room as soon as Katniss Everdeen opened her mouth and unleashed her pipe bomb. Snow can practically hear the tiny eruptions of hope from all over Panem, the whispers that won't stop since fear can only hold them in check for so long.

Too much hope is bad for a nation and President Snow will not stand for it. It is not his way.

Snow remains calm among the chaos. He looks at the frantic faces in the control room and knows he needs to keep order. The Hunger Games has done that for him for so many years and now all of it has gone to hell.

He wants to let the boy die, and it would be so easy to let happen. Snow would have given into the temptation if he were any lesser of a man, but there's a reason why he's been in power for as long as he has. He is well aware that emotions were already running high in the Districts. High emotions can form mobs and riots, anarchy among the underdogs and mutiny from the rich. There are already reports of it starting to fester within the Districts and a single spark would be all it would take to ignite it.

Allowing the District 2 tribute to die could become that spark.

Snow can't have that.

He must plan his next move carefully. Hope is springing up all around him and he needs to quickly strangle the emotion out of his people without upsetting the balance. To have the 'star-crossed lovers' both emerge as victors is one thing—no matter how much  _he_ doubted them, the people of Panem have fallen in love with the couple. While dangerous in it's own right to the government's strict authority, it's still something he can control.

At least with the lovers, people can understand why allowances were made while not losing their fear of the Games. Snow can spin it as a fluke, an accident. He already planned on making it very clear that something like this will never happen again. He could manage two victors.

It's unfortunate he now has three.

Cato has no place in the soapy lovers' drama that was Katniss and Peeta. The Career had placed solidly in third, having been cleanly beaten by the remaining two. Years of history and tradition dictated for him to become nothing more than a footnote in the 74th Hunger Games, as so many tributes had become before him. And yet, even though the Games were declared over and the victor(s) already decided, Cato still had the audacity to cling to life when he should have remained a fallen tribute.

There is no such thing as mercy in the Hunger Games.

Mercy can empower the powerless, causing them to speak out against the Capitol's ironclad dominance of the nation. Mercy can spark thoughts that are dangerous for Snow, thoughts that are deadly for Panem. Mercy can cause the fall of a government.

He's damned if he saves him and damned if he doesn't. To disallow treatment of the boy would only fuel the wildfire Everdeen has sparked and to treat him gives hope to the hopeless. There's really only one thing he can do.

The President gives the order for the cameras to switch back to streaming the distasteful drama and grants the people the life of the Career. He'll allow them to feast on this small meal of hope while he uses the distraction to set Panem right again.

President Snow is all about containment.

* * *

The nation may be talking and the President may be plotting, but the girl in the middle of it all has other things to deal with. Katniss stares at Cato's body, preoccupied with the telltale signs of life she can't avoid seeing. She doesn't know why it's suddenly impossible to tear her gaze away from the  _thump, thump,_ pathetic little _thump_ of a heart that fights dehydration in a body so empty of blood.

How did he, out of all of the other tributes that were slaughtered, be granted such a miracle?

Katniss doesn't believe in miracles. She puts her faith in survival and in herself, as she's learned to do from a very young age. It is a lesson that the Hunger Games has reinforced, barring a few exceptions to the rule. Miracles are a laughable concept after being forced to look into the eyes of the dying and listen to the gurgling rasps of a last drawn breath extracted from a broken body that had nothing left to give. There are no miracles in a world where children are picked at random for an early death so the watching crowds can rate their slaughter.

More medics are arriving on the scene and she is shooed away from the body. Katniss looks on as they roll down the gurney, break out the tourniquets, and prepare the respirator. It's not lost on her that it's all done to save the life of a boy whose death was celebrated and laughed at moments before. Katniss doesn't care about the likes of Cato, but she thinks of Rue and Thresh, Foxface, the young boy with the cornflower blue eyes from 4 and the girl with the knobby knees from 8. She sees the faces of her fellow tributes and imagines how Panem must of have cheered each and every one of their deaths.

It's a sick world.

She clenches her pin in the palm of her grubby hand and feels the tip of the needle slide into her skin. The needle draws blood. Morbidly she watches as it oozes from the wound and dribbles down in rusty red drops to cover the pin. The droplets of blood slink down the pin, reaching the area where the drying blood of Cato's already coats the surface. The two mix together in an intimate alliance that Katniss wants no part of.

"What are the chances of his survival?" she asks the medic closest to her. The medic, in the process of inserting a breathing tube down Cato's throat, answers bluntly, "Depends on how the odds are stacked. Could go one way or the other, just like with everyone else."

She gets out of the medic's way after that. Exhausted both emotionally and physically, she can't bring herself to care either way over his fate right now. There's no lost love between the two of them. If he dies—good riddance. And if he lives, she would deal with him then.

The medics rush around, stumbling over one another in attempt to get their third victor back on the hovercraft without losing him along the way. The cameras zoom in to get the best view of the chaos, hoping to thrill the captive audience with the delights of a boy struggling to keep his heart beating.

Katniss turns her back on the scene and returns to Peeta.

* * *

Cato knows it's all over the instant he slips off the bloody metal of the Cornucopia. The mutts will have their dinner, the Capitol will have their show, and the two from 12 will have their victory. They're just unavoidable facts.

So why is he still alive?

He's half suspended between waking and dreaming. There are voices that reach him from within his semi-conscious state, shrill and jabbering. His body aches with a pain so intense he can feel it throbbing at the edges of his brain, waiting to overtake him. He is an open and oozing wound of raw flesh and torn muscle, with jagged pieces of skin shredded clean away. His heart beats so slowly and weighs so heavy. He feels the constriction and compression of every feeble beat it struggles to make.

Cato wonders if he's in hell.

The voices grow stronger, murmuring around him as they prod at his body and make their notes. They poke at him, concentrating on the broken areas that make his body convulse from pain. Losing consciousness would be a blessing, but the scalding pain of the salve they slop onto his wounds keeps him from that comfort. When they reach his mangled arm, it is almost too much to take.

He hears someone screaming. The doctor inject a sedative into his haggard veins, and it's only as it lethargically makes it way through his system does he realize that the screams were his own.

* * *

"Well? Don't just stand there. Report in."

The doctor shifts uncomfortably under the President's glacial stare and wipes his sweating hands against the gore that stains his scrubs. It had not been the easiest of treatments for the doctor and his staff. Both boys were brought into the emergency room in a bad way, and the cameras streaming live footage of the entire procedure and the commentators happily discussing the extent of the damage only further complicated matters.

"We were able to stabilize both of the male Tributes, but it was touch and go for a while. There were a couple of times I thought we would lose one or both of them, sir."

Snow's expression remains neutral, but the doctor is smart enough to realize that this isn't the good news his President was hoping for.

"We did what we could, sir. It's still going to take some time for their bodies to fully heal. The wounds were deep and there was a lot of muscle loss in some areas. One of the tributes even had a tooth stuck in his flesh. See?" The doctor pulls out the lethal tooth for Snow to see. He waves it slightly in the air and accidentally cuts himself on a serrated edge.

Snow ignores the foolishness of the doctor and presses him again. "You were able to heal all of the damage, doctor?"

"We were able to stop the majority of Mellark's bleeding, but his leg is done for. Infection's setting in and there's not much we can do for it now. The one from District 2 had it even worse. The armor he was wearing did protect him to some degree, but we had to treat him for broken ribs and there were numerous lacerations all over his body from the bites. Additionally, I'm not sure how long his heart stopped for, which means we don't know for sure right now if he'll have any resulting brain damage from the lack of oxygen. There'll be some scarring on his body, of course, but the main area of trouble for him is the right arm. It took the brunt of trauma, and I doubt it'll ever function properly again."

Snow strokes his beard as he considers this. "Your recommendation for treatment, doctor?"

"The best case scenario for both of them would be amputation. Mellark needs it, otherwise the infection will take him. The boy from District 2 will likely never regain the full function of his arm. There was just too much damage. I would recommend prosthetic limbs for them both to allow for a relatively normal life. It'll be an adjustment, of course, but ideally—"

"Thank you doctor. I've heard enough. You can go ahead and amputate Peeta Mellark's leg and give him a prosthetic. That'll be all."

The doctor's mouth drops slightly in surprise. "Sir, but what about the other boy? His arm will never heal properly. He'll always have issues with it, the damage was just too extensive. There's plenty of nerve damage in addition to the muscle loss. He'll most likely be crippled for the rest of his life without a prosthetic. I doubt he'll cope well with that since he comes from a Career district. And we don't even know yet if there's brain damage."

President Snow, impatient now with the whole thing, dismisses the doctor's concerns. "Replace Mellark's leg and leave the other as he is. His arm isn't threatening his life, so he'll just have to manage with it. We'll see what the condition of his mental state is soon enough."

"We can try something else for him if you don't want us to perform the amputation. There are supplements and experimental treatments that may improve the condition of his arm somewhat. Some may think it seems cruel to leave him like this."

"Are you sure, doctor, that you wish to question me?" Snow says softly. "I wouldn't recommend it if I were you."

The doctor drops his gaze to the ground and inspects the grungy tiled floor behind his feet. "No, sir. I'm just trying to do what is best for my patients. He can always have the surgery later on, but it might be more damaging to his psyche if we wait."

President Snow stares him down. "That is why you leave the decisions to me, doctor."

"I—yes, President Snow. Of course."

If President Snow had his way, there would be no treatment at all. Snow would much rather have the two boys as corpses, but for now he has to wait and bid his time before he acts.

Two victors are already a problem, but three? No, three is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Cato should have been left for dead, just like all of the other fallen tributes before him. If the Games continued as they should have, Cato would have been nothing more than a raw piece of mutilated meat left to bake in the heat of the field until someone eventually came by to pick up the corpse. Unfortunately for Snow, he was forced to grant Cato his life—for now, anyway—but nothing comes without a price. Leaving the proud Career with a crippled arm is only the start.

Katniss Everdeen ignited a detonation across the nation the moment she announced Cato was still alive to the thirsty ears of Panem.

And unfortunately for Katniss Everdeen, President Snow digs in his heels and comes up with a way to handle this very regrettable situation.

 


	3. Think

"It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything."

– _The Hunger Games,_ pg. 21

* * *

 

Unexpected change can shatter a soul.

And when there are only fragments, just what is left behind in the pieces?

* * *

Haymitch does his best to get completely plastered before he sees Katniss again. What starts out as a drink or two to calm his nerves ends with him emptying the bottle. It's a lot easier to get through life numb than it is to feel something for somebody other than himself.

So many years and too many tributes. All of the forsaken children who stared up at him with begging eyes that pleaded for the secret of survival. Haymitch thinks they might have driven him mad.

It's the same every year. The tributes stare and beg and pin their hopes on his help, and then they die. They always, always die. No matter what he does, how he helps, or the efforts he makes. The tributes of District 12 are destined to become corpse fodder for the Capitol. The cameras love them, for the runts of the arena always seem to squeal the loudest.

And as they die, as they always do, a bit of what is left of Haymitch dies too. But Katniss and Peeta, his two unlikely underdog victors, have done something Haymitch never expected. They win. Their victory forces Haymitch to experience emotion he forgot he was capable of. Hope, fluttering in his chest, and relief like a breath held in too long.

But what does he do with tributes that actually came back as victors? His advice has only ever gone as far as the arena. He's never had to advise someone else on how to live after winning the Games. He is a mess of a victor himself.

Haymitch is happily through another bottle of liquor when he's informed that Katniss will be there shortly. The officials eye him in disgust, but Haymitch is beyond caring. The oldest District 12 victor knows all too well that it's far better to be the undesirable drunk that no one wants when living in Snow's Panem.

In other Games, after his former tributes had met with decapitation, drowning, or disease (or some other ill-fated stroke of a knife), Haymitch was left to observe the newly crowned victor from another District. All the new victors always seemed to think that surviving the Games meant it was all over, but the truth is that it'll never be over. The Games will only bind the victor in tighter chains. There is no escape. It doesn't end. It never ends.

All victors strangle from the asphyxiation of the soul. It is just inevitable.

Haymitch, who has never had a tribute win the Games, now finds himself with two winners he must pass this burden on to. There isn't anything he can do to help, for he is suffocating as well.

He doesn't know what Katniss was thinking when she announced to the world that the killer from District 2 was still alive, but Haymitch has no doubts that President Snow won't forget it.

He wishes he had another shot of whiskey as the door opens and Katniss is standing before him. When she surprises them both by hugging him, Haymitch belatedly comprehends that all of the alcohol in the world will never be enough to make him forget that he cares, no matter how much it hurts.

* * *

"You're in trouble, sweetheart."

Katniss crosses her legs and looks stubbornly away from Haymitch. "When can I see Peeta?"

Haymitch lets out a small groan of frustration. "Now's not the time to be worrying about that. By all accounts, you shouldn't even have a second victor to worry about. And don't get me started with that little stunt you pulled with the Career, bringing the total up to three."

"Are you trying to say that you wish Peeta died?" Katniss asks, immediately on the defensive for the Boy with the Bread.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't jump to conclusions, sweetheart. Of course I don't want that. I'm happy you both managed to come back."

The brunette isn't pacified. "You make it sound like it would've been easier if I just killed him."

"In all honesty? It would be. Hey!" Haymitch puts up his hands to fend off Katniss's anger as she opens her mouth to protest. "Calm down. Doing what you did with the nightlock berries would have cost you, regardless. The Capitol doesn't appreciate being shown up, especially at their own game. Listen, I'm not saying I don't agree with what you did," Haymitch hurries to reassure her, "but Snow doesn't see it that way."

"Well, President Snow can go shove it up his—"

"Katniss! Stop. This is serious," Haymitch says. He leans forward, bracing his arms on top of his legs and folding his hands together. "It wouldn't have been easy, but I could have worked with that kind of finale. Done something to preserve the namby-pamby pride of the Capitol." He shifts position, flinging his arms wide. "Behold! The lovers who cannot bear to be apart!" Katniss makes a face.

"Make all the faces you want, doesn't matter now anyway. Spinning a story like that isn't going to help our cause with Snow." Haymitch leans forward again, solemn. "The real problem we have here, Katniss, is whatever possessed you to tell the world the Career from District 2 was alive."

She shifts uncomfortably, wishing she had a good reason. "Shock? Exhaustion? I didn't mean to. It just sort of slipped out."

"Slipped out? Now there's an award-winning answer if I ever heard one." The older man quirks his lips into some ironic semblance of a smile. "Couldn't be content with saving one, had to go for two?"

Katniss fidgets again, even though it's not true at all. Even in her wildest fantasies, she never thought she would help Cato with _anything._ In fact, she doesn't give a damn about what happened to him. Cato always wanted the Games, and to Katniss, it seemed only fair that the Games got to keep him in the end. Or should have, anyway.

"I'm guessing the medics were able to stabilize him?" Katniss asks, though somewhere inside she already knows the answer.

"Oh, he's still alive alright. All thanks to you." Haymitch lets out a bark of laughter. "Stubborn bastard just doesn't know how to lose."

Her mentor reaches for another bottle and wrenches the cork off with well-practiced ease. "Trouble's coming, sweetheart. And I hope you're ready for it." He pours the amber colored liquid into priceless Capitol crystal and takes a long swig. "Thing is, I don't know whether it will be Cato or Snow who reaches you first."

* * *

One Clove. Two Cloves. Three Cloves. Four. A room full of Cloves, and none of which are real.

The many Cloves smirk at Cato, laughing, and converge into one single, slight image of a girl.

"Oh, Cato. This is going to be such fun!" His former tribute partner tells him gleefully, and her shade rushes at him with knives drawn. Her image shatters into tiny fragments as she collides into him, and Cato wakes up.

His first coherent thought is that the room is too bright and it hurts his eyes. Being alive seemed impossible after all he had endured. Cato groans as the pain in his head slams against the wall of his skull, but pain is power once again for him. Pain meant he still had breath in his body, a heartbeat beneath his ribcage. Satisfaction worms its way up from his gut.

All around him is the stink of sterilization and the room is much too white and his brain jumps to all sorts of conclusions. If he were still alive, if the Capitol brought him out of the arena...that could logically only mean one thing.

If Cato is alive, than the two from 12 must be dead.

He was the victor.

Triumph swarms through him, the feeling intoxicating. He's still not quite sure how it happened, but it doesn't matter. He _won._ He made his district proud, his parents, his friends, e _veryone._ He lived up to his Career heritage by beating out all of the others. It doesn't matter that his head is throbbing and it was difficult for him to keep his thoughts together. He's won. He's the victor. He's —

There's something not right with his arm.

His arm is a highway of angry red flesh and jagged teeth marks. The skin, pitted in some places, shows where a fang sunk in just a bit too deep. A small valley of missing muscle that could not be coaxed into returning has formed on the upper bicep and the ring finger is but a nub, the rest of it popped clean off the top joint. In comparison to the rest of his brawny frame, the arm is a patchwork puppet parody.

No victor he's ever seen was left with such hideous scars.

All the air is sucked out of his lungs and the sound of his stubborn, sturdy heart is ricocheting down his ear canals and driving itself screaming into his brain.

This couldn't happen to him. He knew the mutts were relentless with their torture, but wasn't the medical staff after the Games there for a reason? Why had they not fixed this?

What is left of his muscles throb in shrill agony as Cato tries to lift his arm up. He can only manage to raise it roughly a foot above his bed before his arm locks and goes no further. The muscles spasm and his entire body breaks out in an exertion-driven sweat.

His right arm. His sword arm.

He can barely make a fist.

Cato can't breathe. The sterile room closes in around him and all he can see is the crippled limb. Clove's laughter is echoing in his ears.

"This can't be happening. It's not real," he murmurs to himself, ripping out the IV lodged in his veins. He just has to wake up, that's all. It has to be a dream. There's no way the Capitol would leave a victor like this. It just can't be real. He wouldn't let it be real.

The IV falls to the ground and leaks green-tinged fluid across pristine tile, and all Cato wants to do is tear the insulting arm off of his strong, proud body.

He's a victor he's a victor he's a victor.

So why didn't he get the treatment as one?

The door to the room opens, and Cato whips his head up to find Katniss Everdeen standing in the frame of the doorway, a basket of bread in one arm and shock stamped across her face.

Cato realizes, within a moment of false calm, that he is not the true victor after all.

* * *

There is a second of silence, interrupted only by the monitors that beep along with Cato's heartbeat, as well as Peeta's, the roommate the Career didn't even notice he had.

Her eyes immediately drift from his face and widen in disbelief as they lock onto to his right arm. She can't help her stare, her blatant surprise fueling Cato's shame and fury. Like a wounded animal, he turns on her.

"What kind of sick joke is this, 12?" Cato's pupils are dilated to the degree that the black almost eclipses the blue. There is a hack in his voice as he forces air into his heaving lungs, trying to get the words out. "How are we both still alive? There's only ever _one_ person who makes it out."

Katniss only shrugs, not wanting to go through everything that happened with him. She doesn't owe him anything, even an explanation. Let the Capitol lackeys tell him that. She already did more for him than she ever wanted to.

Her lack of explanation only further infuriates him.

"Did you do this to me?"

Katniss's back stiffens at the accusation, and she wishes she could be anywhere else than in the room with him. She doesn't want to give him any kind of information he can use against her, but at the same time she can't ignore him. Even injured, she's not foolish enough to believe Cato is no longer dangerous. He'll always be dangerous for as long as he lives. However, the power between the two has changed, and she knows this just as much as he does.

"I don't know what the Capitol did to you after the arena."

"What they did? _What they did?"_ He sarcastically looks down at his arm. "I think it's obvious what they _didn't_ do.. _._ "

"Don't talk to me as if I'm stupid. I don't know why they didn't give you a prosthetic," Katniss retorts. The arena is where Cato had all the power, but now he snarls at her from under the crisp white sheets of a hospital bed, ruined arm trembling at his side. At this moment, he doesn't seem very powerful at all.

Out of all the possible tributes who could have survived against the odds, it had to be him. Hostile, violent, hungry Cato. Katniss still has trouble understanding how the world could let him live while Rue had to die. She feels the weight of Games on her shoulders and the viciousness of the Capitol like a knife in the gut. Seeing him alive, instead of someone else who was far more deserving to be in that bed...

Rue. Thresh. Foxface.

Katniss thinks she hates him for it. And for them.

Whether she is in the arena or out of it, Katniss acknowledges that Cato is Cato. She knows what he has done and all he would have loved to do if the Games had gone his way. His arm is a mutilated mess of what it used to be, but was that supposed to make her feel bad for him? Should she feel bad that he may have difficulty slitting throats and breaking necks because he's essentially lost his arm?

Katniss can't find pity for the boy who slaughtered so many. He's feasted his own ego on their cries and in their blood too many times. It wasn't just for the Games, he _wanted_ to do it. He took pleasure in killing anyone he came across. He didn't kill for the Games, he killed for himself. There's a difference.

But he didn't kill her. Even after everything he said, everything he tried to do to them. He couldn't kill her, and he didn't kill Peeta. Against her better judgment, Katniss's eyes stray briefly towards the bed in which Peeta rests, and Cato notices the other boy for the first time.

"Lover Boy? Lover Boy's alive too?" Cato laughs hysterically, his good arm gripping the edge of the bed and tearing into the sheets. "You, me, and Lover Boy. Three tributes still alive. What kind of shit is this?"

Cato looks down at his brutalized arm, darts his huge eyes over to Peeta, and shoots back to Katniss. The two victors and their Victor.

"This isn't right. This isn't how the Games are played. There can only be one." The veins pulse on Cato's forehead, the muscles in his right arm spasm furiously.

It's all too much for him to take.

"You did something, 12."

Nothing is in his control anymore. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is right.

Being alive when he should have been dead. The crippled arm. The girl from 12 standing before him, hair in a neat braid. The girl who is in his way, has always been in his way. And now she wears his victor's crown and he is left with nothing.

It is all…just too much. And Cato snaps.

"Just what did you do, 12?" he screams, lunging for her from the bed. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME?"

The orderlies, having heard the commotion, push past Katniss to restrain the enraged blond boy. Cato has lost his mind, focusing all his fury and confusion onto the one girl who has shown him up at every turn.

To her credit, Katniss keeps her gaze focused on Cato's crazed blue eyes and doesn't back down.

"You'll regret you've ever volunteered for this, I'll make sure of that!" Cato's words spring forward alongside his patchwork body, aiming for Katniss as the orderlies restrain him. His right arm dangles uselessly at his side as his left claws at the men who hold him back. One of the orderlies jab a needle into Cato's neck.

Someone must have gone to tell Haymitch what was happening, for he suddenly appears at her side. He is out of breath. "Let's get out of here, Katniss." He grabs a hold of her elbow. "You don't need to listen to this."

She pulls her elbow out of his grasp. "I'm not leaving Peeta unconscious and alone with Cato in the same room."

Haymitch isn't deterred. "He'll be fine, we can visit him in a little bit after the drug knocks out that Career."

"We have to get them switched. Peeta isn't safe if he's near him."

"I don't think you realize the gravity of the situation, sweetheart," he hisses beneath his breath. "Snow has the authority to do damn well whatever he pleases. Don't forget that." He grasps her arm again. "Come on, now. You aren't exactly helping things by being here."

Katniss looks back at Cato. His angry, angry, eyes are beginning to cloud over from whatever drug the orderlies used, but the bloodlust in them doesn't dim. His arm is a mottled piece of dead weight by his side.

"I'm going to kill you, 12," he promises her, and Katniss doesn't doubt for a moment he'll try. Brutal, beautiful, broken Cato, who had hunted her down relentlessly in the Games. He would slit her throat if given half the chance, and she has had enough of him.

Over her shoulder, Katniss throws back her words like a cheap jab to heart. "You know, that would mean so much more if it was coming from someone who was actually still a threat."

The door closes before he can react, and the sound within its hush seems to say _'I have no pity for you.'_

* * *

_Edited on 12/6/2015 for grammar and sentence structure._


	4. That

"Listen up. You're in trouble. Word is the Capitol's furious about you showing them up in the arena. The one thing they can't stand is being laughed at and they're the joke of Panem."

— _The Hunger Games,_ pgs. 356 - 357

* * *

 

Between the body, the mind, and the heart, which holds the most power?

The body is frail.

The mind is fragile.

The heart is strongest, if only given the chance to beat.

* * *

The murderous contempt of a crippled eighteen year old boy is heavy in the air, and all of the medics feel it. His scorn is practically tangible, dark with anger and red with promised rage.

They fear him. It would be foolish not to. They have seen what their patient has done and what he loves to do, and it causes them to rub their throats with paranoid hands. The hallway carries the echo of his screams, even though he's long gone quiet.

"He's dangerous," the medics whisper among themselves. _"_ Too dangerous for Panem."

Maybe he is.

* * *

Peeta awakens with Katniss's name on his lips and a vacancy below his knee. He doesn't have to be told his leg is gone, it's something his body knows instantly. How could it not? There's a glaring emptiness of void space.

Morbid curiosity drives him to be sure.

Peeta's fingers stretch, quivering, past his hip and down his thigh. His clumsy movements make it difficult to avoid catching his fingers in the blanket, but he manages, somehow, finally reaching his knee and with it, air. The empty gap is a chasm of space and panic. He trails his hand over the smooth nub of skin that marks the end of his leg and tries his best not to cry.

The boy has always been a gentleman, rolling his horror into a neat little ball and tucking it away instead of letting it rise.

It could be seconds or hours that pass before the door creaks open and Peeta comes back to himself, acknowledging that not only is he in a hospital, but he is also alive. Whether he has one leg or two, he's made it out of the Games and he's never been more grateful to be alive when there's Katniss standing in the doorway, smiling just for him.

* * *

"And that's the story?"

"Yep."

Peeta leans his head against the unyielding metal of the hospital headboard. "I'm not sure if I like everything that happened in that story."

"Yeah, well, neither do I…" Katniss flits her eyes over to another bed and another blond and grimaces. "As if this wasn't complicated enough already."

"I thought it was you, Katniss."

"Me what?"

"I heard the medics, just before I passed out. I heard them say to hurry, that whoever it was didn't have much time left. I thought something might have happened to you."

"That might have been better. At least that way we wouldn't have to deal with him," she says, shifting in her chair and motioning towards the other side of the room.

Peeta looks at her with disapproval. "You can't mean that."

"No, I don't." She has the grace to look embarrassed. "But you didn't see him, Peeta. Cato was out of his mind. He thought I had something to do with what happened to his arm."

"He's unstable," Peeta tells her. "You're lucky you didn't see everything he did in the arena. I wish I didn't."

"I saw enough of him."

Katniss gets up from her chair, padding over on silent feet to reach the side of Cato's bed. She studies the face of her rival, observing the hard planes of his face and the cruelty embedded in his jaw. Cato looks as motionless as he did when she found him by the Cornucopia, and it's still just as difficult to turn her gaze away from the rise and fall of his chest. The very beat of Cato's heart mocks her, and Katniss voices the question that hasn't left her mind since the moment she realized he was still alive.

"Why did he get to live, when so many others died?"

"Why did Prim get chosen, when so many had higher odds?" Peeta asks, trying to keep his thoughts away from the empty space where his leg should be.

She doesn't answer him because she doesn't have an answer for that herself. The harder part of her heart murmurs to just kill him now and even up the odds.

Would it really be so heinous if she did? Cato wouldn't hesitate if their situations were reversed, that's for sure. He's already promised her as much. President Snow's wrath had a lot to do with her unknowing participation in helping Cato. Who knows? Maybe she'd finally score some points if she killed him and the vindictive old man would leave her and Peeta alone.

As if.

Killing Cato now won't solve her problems, but she can't shake the instinct of the Games. She's survived on a combination of guts, strength, and luck. All of her instincts, fed by the violence, are insistent for her to get rid of the boy who will only continue to cause more trouble for her in the future.

Who would miss him anyway? She certainly wouldn't. Katniss has only known Cato for a brief time, most of it spent trying not to meet the wrong end of his sword. However, she does know this— he's vicious, loves to fight, doesn't hesitate to kill, and expected to win. He may not have won, but nothing else has changed. She doesn't need to know more about him than that.

"Katniss…?" Peeta's voice filters through the room, and it makes her aware of the pound of blood in her ears and the way her nails are digging crescents into the rough skin of her palms.

"What?" She calls back to him, and considers for a moment if Peeta is capable of reading her mind. Katniss may be out of the arena, but its influence still surrounds her. The Games, the Capitol, President Snow— all warping her thoughts with a twisted sense of survival she just can't seem to shake.

"You didn't do anything wrong, you know," Peeta says softly.

She tenses, wondering if Peeta Mellark really can read minds. He may think she's done nothing wrong, but Katniss knows well enough that he doesn't always see her clearly. Wrong would be considering the murder of a boy who couldn't even defend himself right now. Wrong is letting the Games change her so much that she can't separate then from now.

"I mean what you did with Cato," Peeta continues, "When you saw he was alive."

"I only created more problems for us by doing that," she tells him bluntly.

"Yeah, it did," Peeta agrees, nodding his head slowly. He absentmindedly rubs his ruined leg. "But it doesn't mean that it was wrong."

Katniss crosses the room and returns to Peeta, leaving behind whatever murderous intentions she harbored at Cato's bedside. She highly doubts Cato will notice the extra weight.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I did it?"

Peeta looks at her, eyes gentle. "No. You had whatever reasons you had. We just go forward from here. That's all there is to it."

Katniss wants to correct him, tell him that she didn't have any reason at all to save Cato. It just slipped out, tired words falling past the guard of an exhausted girl. Words that can't be taken back once they're gone.

She doesn't tell him.

* * *

Cato wakes up for a second time in the hospital bed and it goes nothing like his first. For one thing, there is no assumption of victory and there is no Clove. Instead, there's only the certainty of his mangled arm, and Brutus.

"Hello, Third Place."

"Fuck you." Cato's rage, which has never truly left, flares up instantly at the jab. He pushes himself up and leans his back against the bed frame in effort to show that he's still in control.

"Testy, aren't we? Well, I can understand that. Probably would be too if I had just lost to the scumrats of 12," Brutus smirks, but his smile is cold. He wants the words to hurt, and they do.

Cato, who does not want anyone else to witness his humiliation, darts his eyes over to Peeta's empty bed, and Brutus notices.

"They took your roommate out about an hour ago to run some tests. Maybe he'll get started on baking you a get well cake and make you the official third member of Team Twelve," the older man tells him.

The blond twists the blue fleece blanket on his bed in effort to contain his anger, the calluses on his hand negating much of its softness. Cato is not one to hold in his emotions, but any interaction with Brutus requires whatever control he has. The victor is a dangerous man.

"What do you want?"

"Just to see how third place suits the would-be victor from District 2."

Cato's glare cuts as deep as his sword. "Then get out."

Brutus's laugh is patronizing. "Don't flatter yourself. As if you could really do anything to me." The muscular man reaches out with a speed his brawny frame doesn't look capable of and grips Cato's right arm, jerking it upward.

"Son of a—!" The color drains out of Cato's face instantly. Agony burns within his crippled arm as the muscles that remain are made to stretch beyond their limits. Cato bites his tongue in effort not to cry out and the tang of blood fills his mouth. He hopes he doesn't choke on it.

"All that training, for what? Those hours I spent mentoring you? A waste. Just look at you now." Brutus is cold, angry, and mean. "It would've been better if you died, rather than to return like this."

The older man drops the mangled arm and Cato immediately tucks it back against his chest, a wounded bird with a wounded wing. "It's that girl from 12. She did this. She messed up the Games. I'm going to kill her—get her back for _this_."

"A tribute from District 2 blaming his failures on a slum girl from 12? What a disgrace."

Pain begins to build behind his eyes, and Cato resists the urge to rub his temples. "It doesn't matter what you think. Killing her is the only thing I can do."

"No, that's where you're wrong. It doesn't matter now whether you kill the girl, it won't make you the winner of the Games, and it won't make you a true victor."

"Shut up. What do you know?"

Brutus leans forward, his eyes wicked. "I know if you kill the girl outside of the arena, it will be considered murder and not fair play. Can't go around killing people, Cato. That's not how the world works after the Hunger Games."

The pain in Cato's head increases, climbing across the fleshy lobes of his brain. "That's the way I know best." Cato looks down at his ruined arm, and corrects himself. "The way I knew best."

"You still got one good arm. Train with that one," Brutus says, pointing with predatory laziness towards Cato's muscular left arm. "And see if you can strengthen up the other."

Cato laughs, though not out of humor. "Train left-handed? I've only ever been good with the right."

"And one good arm is all you have right now. Really want to let that girl show you up? You know, the one who saved your life?" Brutus's words are venom.

"Saved my life?" Cato echos, clearly confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, you don't know? That's cute."

"Explain yourself, Brutus, or I'll gut you."

The older man grins, revealing yellowed teeth that remind Cato of the mutts. It's a similarity that sends the muscles in his bad arm into a memory-induced spasm.

"12's the one that found you after your heart restarted," Brutus explains, with the same smirk plastered all over his face. "The Capitol declared you dead, and she goes back for something at the Cornucopia and finds you still breathing. And then she goes and lets all of Panem know about it."

Brutus' explanation doesn't compute, since there's no way 12 would do that for him. The pain in his head is beginning to pound at the back his brain and it's getting difficult to ignore as Cato attempts to make sense of the words.

"Why the hell would she do that?"

Brutus shrugs, entertained by the entire affair. "Don't know, don't really care. Just knew that one minute we were discussing your funeral arrangements and the next minute we're not. Snow's not too happy, though I'm sure you figured that out."

"No shit. As if this arm wasn't enough of a message from Snow," Cato's words are dark. "12's even less deserving of victor status than I first thought. Doesn't she know how the Games are played?"

"I don't think the people from 12 are known for their education _._ "

Cato rubs one side of his temple in an attempt to soothe the pain in his head. "Doesn't matter. I owe her nothing."

"Well, you _do_ owe her your life."

"The only thing I owe her is the sharp end of a sword. This…" Cato looks down at his crippled arm, continuing, "This isn't life."

"So then train. Maybe one day you'll actually be useful in bringing honor to your district." Brutus stands, stretches, and pats Cato on the head as if he is an insolent child throwing a tantrum. The boy scowls, and his eyes flash for blood as he slams his mentor's mocking hand away.

"Temper, temper. It's what made people bet on you," Brutus pauses for a moment, putting emphasis on his words. "Too bad they bet wrong." And then he grins one last time, showing the teeth that Cato hates so much as he heads for the door.

On the back of Brutus's arm is an odd looking bracelet, and the blond can't recall if he has seen it on his mentor before. It is difficult to think with the pain in his brain.

"Headaches, Cato?" Brutus calls back innocently.

"Yeah."

"The medics warned that something like this could happen. Has to do with the couple of minutes your heart wasn't beating. Sort of thing isn't good for you with the lack of oxygen."

"Something like what?" Cato asks, though he almost doesn't want the answer.

"It may not be just your body that was messed up, Cato." Brutus is all smiles. "But your brain could be messed up too."

Brutus laughs as he leaves, and within his laughter, Cato hears the taunting voice of Clove.

* * *

Sinking into the softness of the plush couch, Katniss has difficulty comprehending the luxury of the furniture. A lifetime of the Seam has ruined her ability to appreciate the fancy aspects of Capitol life.

"Aren't the couches just fabulous, darling?" Effie coos, dressed in a shocking shade of green. Katniss figures that it's Effie's way of showing her District 12 pride, even though the color kind of hurts her eyes if she looks at it too long.

"It feels as if the cushions are trying to eat me."

"Oh come now, that's the arena talking! You've earned the right to enjoy this."

Katniss rests her cheek against the soft fabric and resists the urge to tell Effie otherwise. The older woman may not always say the right things, but she has always been honest in her own way. Katniss knows this, and holds her tongue.

Effie sits on the opposite side of the couch and elegantly flicks the remote to turn on the display screen. She is always in a constant state of fluid movement and poise.

"So, tell me. How is our Peeta doing?"

"I think he's going to be fine," Katniss pauses, and then adds, "But they had to take his leg."

The older woman lets out a small exclamation of joy, ignoring the second half of what Katniss said. "What superb news! Just in time for the after Games interview. I must start planning now and make sure that Cinna chooses something that shows you both off. Do you like red? Perhaps pink? I bet you'd look darling in pink."

Katniss lets Effie dress her in every shade of the spectrum, but focuses more on the program running on the display screen. Caesar Flickerman is animated as he shows clips from the Games. As he points to a particularly violent scene, Caesar tends to bob his head along to the action, as if doing so would make him seem like more of a participant. Katniss wonders how excited he would be if he were actually in the arena. She doubts he would have the same reaction.

Effie fades to white noise as Katniss watches the broadcast. She is fixated by the faces of her fellow tributes that flash across the screen, as Caesar takes a red marker—red for effect, for the blood split _—_ and slashes an 'X' across the faces of the fallen. Sometimes the marker ink leaks and dribbles in slow globs down their faces.

And with a click, Caesar Flickerman fades away while in the middle of yet another enthusiastic head bob. "I don't think it would be in your best interest to be watching stuff like this, sweetheart," Haymitch tells her, setting down the remote and keeping it away from Effie, who protests. She has always been a big Caesar fan, especially admiring his sense of fashion.

Haymitch sits on the armchair adjacent to Katniss, and reaches for a drink. "Everything go alright when you went back down at the hospital ward?"

Katniss remembers Cato's angry face and his mocking heart, and replies, "Yeah. It was quiet. Peeta says he looks forward to seeing you."

"Ah, excellent. We don't need any more trouble than the trouble we've already got," Haymitch takes a long sip of his drink, but doesn't feel the burn. "Now about that interview…"

"What about it?" Katniss shifts on the couch and regrets it immediately as she sinks back into the cushion.

"I'm sure Katniss and Peeta will be just wonderful. _They_ are the talk of the Capitol! And so are we!" Effie chimes in, her curls dancing in excitement.

"Yeah, well, you do realize that they won't be the only two up there."

"You mean that brute from 2 will be with them as well?"

"It makes sense," Katniss muses, mostly to herself. "He is a victor too."

"But he wouldn't be if it wasn't for you! Don't let him steal your spotlight! You know how those Careers can be when they're on stage and—"

"Effie, I think that spotlight thievery is the least of our worries right now. If anything," Haymitch pauses to take another sip of his drink, "I would want them _out_ of the spotlight."

"Haymitch, this is their moment! Just because you didn't live yours up doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to."

"By not living it up, I was allowed to live in the first place."

Katniss studies her mentor and asks, "Just what would you have us do?"

"There have been whispers starting in some of the Districts. There has always been just one victor, but through your actions, Katniss, you managed to pull two more victors out with you. It _s_ parked something, you see?"

The notion of sparking anything beyond a makeshift fire makes Katniss uncomfortable. She has never been one for attention. "I bet Snow just loves that."

"Love is one word for it. You made the Capitol look bad. Showing them up, not once, but twice," Haymitch adds more liquor to his glass, continuing, "Some Districts have grasped onto to that. It's making them think."

"Surely President Snow cannot blame our victors for that. It's not as if they are openly going against the Capitol. And they cannot control what goes on in other Districts," Effie protests, for she is still a Capitol woman at heart.

"See now, they started it. That's the problem. Three victors? Anything beyond a sole victor is already unimaginable, but now there's three," Haymitch swirls his drink around, an action that betrays his nerves. "Three people got out of that arena, and the world didn't end. The Capitol couldn't do anything about it. It's what makes people start to think."

Quietly, Katniss meets Haymitch's gaze and asks again, "So what do I do?"

"Well, the Capitol can't directly touch you three right now without risking uprising in other Districts. It would look too suspicious. But it doesn't mean Snow won't find another way to take care of you. Just as long as the Capitol's hands look clean."

A heavy weight settles in Katniss's stomach. "My family?"

"Potentially," Haymitch looks away from her, "Or an indirect way to get rid of you or another of the victors. Hard to tell what Snow is thinking."

"Is there anything to be done about it?" Effie's hands flutter nervously in the air as she talks.

"Well, the first step is using the interview to make it seem as if you weren't _actually_ trying to go against the Capitol," he instructs Katniss.

"I wasn't! I was just…"

"You were just a silly girl, unable to kill the boy from your District who had you emotionally mixed up throughout the Games. You couldn't win if it meant living without the boy who so clearly loved you, not while you felt something in return for him."

The thought of telling Panem her personal feelings, whether real or not, makes Katniss queasy. She knew Peeta wasn't acting, and she did what she needed to do in order to survive. But to take that outside of the arena? She cared about Peeta, she knew that much. She wanted to do everything in her power to protect him. But was that the same as love?

Effie, always direct and to the point, barges in on Katniss's thoughts. "Well, that's all fine and lovely. But what about that bully from District 2?"

"Yeah…how do I explain Cato? Is there even an explanation we could use for that?"

Haymitch pushes back his hair with his hands as he thinks. "That's where things get tricky. I can sell a love story, but Cato makes that difficult."

"Come on, Haymitch. There must be something you can think of," Effie says.

"Tell them…hmm...well, how about when you saw Cato, with his blond hair and blue eyes, it reminded you so much of Peeta," Haymitch thinks out loud.

"Anyone who watched the Games knows that the two of them are not alike at all," Katniss tells him flatly.

"They don't have to be alike! That's the not point," he sighs, frustrated. "In the interview, tell them that you saw the blond hair and blue eyes and immediately thought of Peeta. You imagined what would have happened if it _was_ Peeta, still alive somewhere in that bloody carcass."

Haymitch glares at Katniss, who has rolled her eyes. "Listen. You tell them that you were so overwhelmed from your emotions for Peeta that finding someone who resembled him was just too much. You thought about how if it was Peeta, still alive and barely hanging on to life, and got so swept up you acted on pure instinct to save him."

Effie sighs happily. "Oh Haymitch, that's lovely."

"I think it's stupid," Katniss mutters.

"Well," Haymitch toasts her and says, "let's see you come up with something better."

She doesn't.

* * *

_Ding._ The elevator sounds softly, and the door opens for its occupants.

"Do you need anything, President Snow?"

President Snow adjusts the white rose on his lapel and dismisses the guard. "No, that will be all. I will return shortly."

The guard inclines his head at the request as Snow leaves the elevator. The elevator begins the ascent back up to main Capitol building, closing its doors and obscuring the sign that illuminates the basement floor.

The sign reads ' _LABORATORY.'_

* * *

_Updated on 12/7/2015 for grammar and sentence structure._


End file.
